EA closes down Spellforce developer Phenomic

This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

EA Phenomic has closed its doors with little detail as to why coming from parent company EA. All they have said is the closure of the studio is part of a wider internal adjustment, with Phenomic employing anywhere up to 60 employees that now need to find new employment.

For real-time strategy fans it is a blow. The company was originally founded in 1997 in Ingelheim, Germany as Phenomic Game Development. They went on to develop Spellforce: The Order of Dawn along with two expansion packs before being acquired by EA in 2006. Since then the renamed EA Phenomic has produced Spellforce 2: Shadow Wars and its expansions, BattleForge, Lord of Ultima, and the free-to-play Command & Conquer: Tiberium Alliances. No other projects had been announced by the studio since that game shipped in 2012, with the last bit of news being posted on their site actually announcing they were hiring people.

What will happen to the Spellforce IP is also unclear, but EA has stated it isn’t going to stop producing RTS and RPG titles, so there’s a chance another studio will eventually get to develop a new title in the series. The original founder of Phenomic, Volker Wertich, remained with the company when it was acquired by EA and is also the designer responsible for The Settlers. He is still listed as creative director at EA, but again, we don’t know yet if he remains an employee at EA following thise closure.

With the experience that existed within Phenomic it shouldn’t take long for those who have been there a while to find new employment. I’d also like EA to explain why it couldn’t find another project for the studio to focus on. They had RTS, RPG, and free-to-play game creation experience. Why did this small studio need to disappear?